Novelists, poets, freelancers, nonfiction writers, editors, and
agents will give nuts-and-bolts advice at the 17th annual Florida
First Coast Writers� Festival at the Sea Turtle Inn at Atlantic Beach
on May 15-17.
Speakers will include the following:

To take advantage of the early bird rate, interested persons should
register early by going to the Festival�s website at http://web.fccj.edu/wf
or calling 904.997-2669.

The winners of the Festival contests will also be announced at
the conference: the novel contest (sponsored by the North Florida
Writers), the Page Edwards Short Fiction contest, the Douglas Freels poetry
contest, and the Robert Grimes "Good Earth" poetry contest.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NFW TO HEAR FOUNDER OF TO THE LETTER

The North Florida Writers�s speaker for the April membership meeting
will be H. Christine Lindblom, founder of To The Letter (totheletter.com).
The internet website provides authors with a complete range of services
aimed at getting their manuscript published.

She will speak at 2 p.m. Saturday, Apr. 12, at Kent Campus� auditorium
conference room (F128B).
She has served as editor for the Florida Palm and was convention
coordinator for the Florida Writers Association Convention 2002. She is
an experienced project administrator, researcher, content editor, copyeditor
and proofreader.

She has a bachelor�s of arts degree from the University of Arizona,
where she participated in the creation and implementation of federally
funded teaching programs. Ms. Lindblom lives north of Jacksonville, with
her husband, two children, two dogs and three cats.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

WRITER LAURA HAYWOOD DIES MAR. 27

The Northeast Florida writing community suffered a loss Thursday
evening, Mar. 27, when Laura Haywood died from a heart attack.

Ms. Haywood was generous with her time and attended, and often
spoke to, such groups as the North Florida Writers, the Writers' Festival,
Septemberfest for Writers, and science fiction groups.

A frequent winner in Writers' Festival contests for fiction, she
wrote a humorous ode expressing the importance of the fellowship of writers
(see http://web.fccj.org/~ngardner/ode.html). She won first place in short
fiction in 1998 for "The Far Side of the Pond." Earlier, she came
in second in the novel contest to her good friend, the late Virginia Kays
Veenswijk (1994). A websearch for "Laura Haywood" and "writer" produces
a hint of her creative efforts, ranging from columns on women's issues
or the senior experience to her interest in science fiction. She edited
collections of short stories with Isaac Asimov.

Writers are mortal, but, as Faulkner noted, a writer speaks to
70 years in the future.

Good work, Laura. -- hd3

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

FIND YOUR NICHE IN SELF PUBLISHING

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on "Find
Your Niche" in publishing.]

By DOROTHY JANE MILLS

Perhaps Number One on your list of promotional devices should
be the web site. Today, no writer can afford to be without one. In that
sense, writers are like any other business people: if you have something
to offer, you must have a presence on the web. Build a site that emphasizes
the appeal of your work to its particular audience(s) as well as the uniqueness
of your book--whatever sets it apart from others of the same genre. Since
mounting two web sites I have received queries from all over the world
and made many satisfying contacts.

Moreover, there are other web sites whose managers want to know
about your book and will gladly insert a link to your site if you ask,
or who often review books like yours and will be happy to receive a copy
for the purpose. Be sure to view these web sites before querying their
managers, so that you can make your query specific to a site�s emphasis.

Reviews are problematic for self-published books. It�s very difficult
to get them reviewed in the standard journals, many of whom print the forthright
statement, �Don�t bother to send self-published books; we don�t review
them.� Investigate the on-line journals to find those who are looking for
books of the type you have written. You will find some who are interested.

Writing articles about your subject is a useful tack to take.
Magazine editors (don�t forget the online magazines) welcome query letters
about articles that suit their magazines. Be sure to check the library
reference works on magazines before you send query letters, so that you
don�t inadvertently contact publications uninterested in your idea or subject.
An American author who lives in Japan but has no internet access, operating
under the assumption that my company reviews children�s books, just sent
me a book he published. What a waste of his time and money!

Another important tool is the monthly newsletter. As soon as you
develop any contacts at all, solicit subscribers to an electronic newsletter.
Offer to send it out free. In it you put four things:

Collect e-mail addresses from buyers and potential buyers in order to
offer free subscriptions to your newsletter.

Some people who give written advice to selfpublishers suggest
advertising. If you know the right magazine or journal or newspaper that
members of your prospective audience read, investigate costs and decide
whether to place an ad that will inform readers about a new book in the
field, one they won�t want to miss. I have done a little advertising, but
I prefer personal contacts to impersonal ones.

Develop informative handouts that go along with your book. Use
them when you are autographing your book, when you give book presentations,
and when you send out information about your book. They should supplement
the presentation of your book, developing it in ways that you cannot do
orally. Recycle some of this information occasionally in your newsletters.

Collect endorsements. Ask permission to use quotations from these
endorsements in preparing one of your handouts. Give this handout a colorful
title and attach it to emails you send to those who are prospective buyers.
Use some quotations in newsletters, too.

Subscribe to an informational service like John Kremer�s. He publishes
Book Marketing Update and an on-line supplement to it. In these publications
he lists names of editors at magazines, newspapers, and other media who
are looking for particular types of books and authors. He gives the editors�
or broadcasters� contact information, too, along with other helpful information
for self-publishers. This is an expensive service but a valuable one.

Another way to get ideas for promoting your book is to search
guides, such as the following:

These books all recommend to self-publishers the kind of approach
that I suggest here: �niche promotion�--that is, focusing on the particular
part of the market that is most likely to be interested in your book. Instead
of trying to sell to everybody, home in on just the people who are probably
looking for your book right now.

Dorothy Jane Mills, the author of 17 books, has also written under
her former name of Dorothy Z. Seymour. The Labyrinth, sequel to
her historical novel The Sceptre, will be published in spring of 2003.
She has just signed a contract with a commercial publisher, McFarland,
to write her memoirs under the working title My Life in Baseball,
which will appear in 2004, at spring training time. She has been selected
to appear in the new edition of Who�s Who. Her web sites are www.HaroldSeymour.com
and www.DorothyJaneMills.com.

HOMEPAGE EDITOR: Brian Hale (Astrodor@aol.com)
Submissions to the newsletter should generally be about writing
or publishing. If possible, please submit mss. on IBM diskette in
either WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, or RFT format. We pay in copies
to the contributors, with modest compensation for postage and copying.
We pay $5 for pieces of 500 to 599 words; $6, 600+; $7, 700+ words. For
cartoons or art (in our print-version), we pay $5 each. Writers and
graphic artists retain all property rights in their work(s).

ISSN No. 1084-6875
* * *

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Meetings of NFW are held on the second Saturday of the month at
2 p.m. on the Kent Campus of Florida Community College of Jacksonville.
We generally meet in F128B (auditorium conference room).

You may receive feedback from specific individuals by mailing
the manuscript and return postage to the above address. Be sure to allow
time for the manuscript to reach Kent.

If you are writing a story or poem, you will need some expert
feedback--the sort that you will receive at a meeting of the North Florida
Writers.

You won't profit from automatic praise that a close friend or
relative might give or jealous criticism from others who may feel threatened
by your writing.

The NFW specializes in CONSTRUCTIVE feedback that will enable
your manuscript to stand on its own two feet and demand that it be accepted
by an editor or agent. Hence, you need the NFW.

The North Florida Writers is a writer's best friend because we
help members to rid manuscripts of defects and to identify when a work
is exciting and captivating.
Membership is $15 for students, $25 for individuals, and $40
for a family. (Make out checks to WRITERS.)

When you attend a meeting of the North Florida Writers, you eventually
discover that NO ONE has ever died while his or her manuscript was being
read and critiqued. You may be ready to face the ordeal yourself.
. .or, reading this, you may wonder what exactly takes place during a critiquing.

First, you pitch your manuscript into a stack with others' works-in-progress.
Then one of the NFW members hands out each piece to volunteer readers,
taking care NOT to give you back your own manuscript to read.

Second, as the reading begins, each author is instructed NOT to
identify himself or herself and especially NOT to explain or defend the
work. The writer may never have heard the piece read aloud by another's
voice, so the writer needs to focus on the sound of his or her sentences.

Third, at the finish of each selection, the NFW members try to
offer constructive advice about how to make the story better. If
a section was confusing or boring, that information may be helpful to the
author.

The NFW will listen to 10 pages (double-spaced) of prose (usually
a short story or a chapter).

UNHELPFUL FEEDBACK: As you listen to a manuscript, you may
be tempted to say, "That's the stupidest piece I've ever heard."
Alas, you aren't being CONSTRUCTIVE. If you simply do NOT like any,
say, science-fiction, then you may not have anything helpful to say.
That is all right. On the other hand, if you think that a piece was
going along okay and then fell apart, you can help the author by saying,
"I accepted the opening page, but, when the singing buffalo was introduced
somewhere on page 2, the piece lost it for me."

* * *

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